As part of our ongoing end-of-the-year coverage, we published our list of the best films of 2019 on Monday. As usual, we stand by our choices, but we’re not so naïve as to think that it would please everyone. Which is why we’re asking:
What film should’ve made our best of 2019 list?
A.A. Dowd
No big-budget Hollywood spectacle released this year could compete with the nonstop visual pleasures of Bi Gan’s beguilingly hazy crime-movie pastiche Long Day’s Journey Into Night. The film’s plot, about an ex-gangster ruminating on the archetypical accomplices and melodramatic developments of his past, is deliberately vague and maybe even negligible—I can’t improve on my colleague Ignatiy Vishnevetsky’s assertion that it’s “like a semi-familiar noir, watched while nodding at the edge of wakefulness.” As a pure object of desire, something to simply gape at, it’s nonstop dazzling, knocking you on your ass with one gorgeous and inventive image after another, straight through to the show-stopping finale: an unbroken 60-minute shot that actually feels justified, maybe because it’s helping convey the slight remove of a dream. This is my kind of eye candy, and it came in big, generous scoops.
Randall Colburn
Alma Har’el’s Honey Boy is kind of a mess, but I can get past Lucas Hedges’ undercooked rehab scenes and whatever that FKA Twigs stuff was thanks to Shia Labeouf and Noah Jupe, who delivered two of the best performances I saw all year. Labeouf, who based the script on his fractured relationship with his own father, is loathsome and magnetic as he balances the monster he’s mythologized with the flawed man who raised him. The 14-year-old Jupe matches his co-star’s emotional intensity, manifesting a frothing resentment that, unlike his acting partner’s, wasn’t motivated by decades of mental anguish.
Katie Rife
Pedro Almodóvar movies come out pretty regularly, and every one of them gets referred to as a “return to form” by one critic or another. But Pain & Glory resonated with me in a way that none of Almodóvar’s films has since Volver. A big part of that is Antonio Banderas’ rich, expertly rendered performance as Salvador Mallo, an aging filmmaker who’s got Almodóvar’s hair and lives in Almodóvar’s apartment, paintings and all. Suffice to say, this is an autobiographical film, and although the details have been fudged, the tenderness and intimacy as it floats between past and present, buoyed by gentle, colorful animated sequences, is palpably real.
Noel Murray
It was an unexpected treat this year to see The Irishman and Marriage Story become social media sensations on the weekends they debuted on Netflix. But where was that hubbub when Dolemite Is My Name hit? Eddie Murphy gives his best performance since Bowfinger, playing cult comedian Rudy Ray Moore, who became a sensation in the 1970s by turning raunchy folklore into a snappy stand-up act and a series of blaxploitation features. Dolemite Is My Name is a crowd-pleaser, about a scrappy entertainer who found his own audience when the industry shut its doors to him. (And it’s pretty meme-able, too, if you’re into that.)
William Hughes
2019 was a fantastic year for films centered on the haves facing off against the have-nots—as our list ably attests. But none of them scratched my itch for nastiness quite so well as Ready Or Not, a wonderfully dark, class-focused riff on The Most Dangerous Game. The film’s masterstroke is in depicting its blue-blood antagonists realistically, which is to say, as bumbling morons with no real grasp of how to do anything, let alone ritualistic murder, for themselves. The result is a bit like watching the Bluths or the Roses trying to run a murder cult, with all the grim delights that implies.
Charles Bramesco
You’ve got to hand it to Carlos Reygadas: It takes a whole lot of huevos to make a three-hour movie about getting cucked so hard by your actual, real-life wife that your entire life falls apart. His latest epic-of-the-intimate Our Time is constructed from the uglier building blocks of an open relationship, showing how pettiness and jealousy and insecurity get the better of a rancher and his spouse after she takes a liking to their gringo ranch hand. Glimpses of the transcendent (grazing livestock, children frolicking in mudflats) break up this soured love story straddling the line between reality and fiction.
Roxana Hadadi
I’m still not sure why Nia DaCosta’s Little Woods wasn’t a bigger deal. A neo-Western in a similar mold as Hell Or High Water, DaCosta’s directorial debut follows sisters bound by systematic misogyny. As Tessa Thompson’s Ollie deals prescription pills to hurting workers and plans to escort her sister, Deb (Lily James), illegally across the Canadian border for an abortion, the film makes plain how the goal of capitalist patriarchy is to destroy opportunities available to poor women. The stellar cast adds a bristling energy to DaCosta’s script, which seethes with anger as much as it asks for empathy.
Jesse Hassenger
I’m pretty smug and happy with the A.V. Club’s list, as 11 of my top 15 movies made the cut. But I am surprised that a 25-movie list didn’t have room for Luce, Julius Onah’s mesmerizing and exacting adaptation of J.C. Lee’s play about a beloved, seemingly near-perfect high school student (Kelvin Harrison Jr.) who alarms his teacher (Octavia Spencer) and parents (Naomi Watts, Tim Roth) with a disturbing but supposedly good-faith response to a writing assignment. The film turns Luce’s “real” identity into a thought-provoking game of hide-and-seek, and Harrison gives one of the best performances of the year in the role. For that matter, all of the movie’s acting is superb, and Onah makes a stunning comeback after his last film, that ill-fated retro-fitted Cloverfield spinoff. Now I can’t wait to see what he does next.
Vikram Murthi
I already got to write about the two films on my own ballot that didn’t make the main list, but I’ll still stump for Terrence Malick’s A Hidden Life, whose end-of-the-year arrival might make it easy to overlook. Late-period Malick is a polarizing prospect for some, but his latest is his most grounded, accessible film in years (definitely since The Tree Of Life, possibly earlier). It helps that it features a simple, resonant story: An Austrian farmer refuses to pledge allegiance to Hitler and the Third Reich, committing to his moral principles in the face of certain death.
Beatrice Loyaza
The amount of mediocre content that Netflix produces is overwhelming, which, unless your algorithm magically points you in the right direction, makes it easy to overlook smaller indie acquisitions. Canadian directing duo Elle-Máijá Tailfeathers and Kathleen Hepburn’s The Body Remembers When The World Broke Open is one such overlooked title, a poignant story of two indigenous women navigating, over the course of an evening, the aftermath of an episode of domestic violence. It’s a difficult, deliriously distressing film shot in long takes with a handheld camera, placing audiences intimately within an experience too often neglected and misunderstood.
Nick Wanserski
Zhang Yimou’s Shadow was first released in China in 2018, but didn’t make it Stateside until this year. Story-wise, it’s a frothy and convoluted soap opera dealing with all the betrayals, forbidden love, body doubles, secret plots, and obsessions any worthwhile kung fu period piece is known for. But what truly elevates the film is the gorgeous monochromatic art direction that blends whites and blacks together like a Chinese Mò ink stick scraped into a well of water. Also worthwhile is how in a film featuring bladed umbrellas, giant halberd duels, and airy qiang spear combat, the best fight scene is a musical zither duet between the protagonist and his secret love.
Caroline Siede
Beyoncé’s Homecoming isn’t just a recording of one of the greatest concerts of all time; it’s also a testament to the work it takes to look effortless. The film jumps freely from Beyoncé’s two “Beychella” sets—the two nights distinguished by yellow and then bright-pink costumes—adding a joyous magical realism to the final product. Meanwhile, rehearsal footage emphasizes the phenomenal thought and care that went into every aspect of the performance, from its exhaustive choreography to its technical stagecraft to its pointed celebration of historically black colleges and universities. (Beyoncé is the first Black woman to headline Coachella.) Homecoming is a thrilling tribute to the effort of artistry, one that’s as awe-inspiring as it is motivating.
Mike D’Angelo
Since I already stumped for the fatally underseen Light Of My Life in our roundup of films we didn’t review, I’ll instead wonder here why László Nemes’ Sunset received only a tiny fraction of the attention doled out to his previous film, Son Of Saul. The answer’s pretty obvious, I suppose: Son Of Saul is a Holocaust drama set entirely in Auschwitz, whereas Sunset attempts to evoke a similar atmosphere of horror and dread from an early 20th-century Hungarian hat shop. Thing is, Nemes actually pulls it off, employing claustrophobic camerawork and his cast’s vicious politesse to create the sensation that something nightmarish is perpetually on the verge of happening. And lead actor Juli Jakab, who’s in virtually every shot, gives one of the year’s most indelible-yet-ignored performances.
Lawrence Garcia
In Peterloo, which traces the events leading up to the Peterloo Massacre of 1819, director Mike Leigh might appear to have succumbed to the problems of historical drama, filling in the film’s runtime with all manner of lengthy speeches and circuitous political meetings. But apart from showcasing the director’s typically vivid character work, here seen in even the most minor roles, the film also functions as an astonishingly fine-grained study in oration, especially as it pertains to political injustice and the plight of the working class. Contemporary resonance isn’t a great measure of artistic merit, but given the recent U.K. election results, it’s hard not to recognize the foundations of the project’s palpable anger.
122 Comments
Loved Little Woods. Annoyingly, it looks like it still doesn’t have any UK distribution. Hopefully DaCosta’s Candyman remake next year gets her and this film more attention.
STILL no love for The Lighthouse? Fuck, man. With dafriends like this, who needs Dafoes?
I was torn between writing about Midsommar, The Lighthouse, and Shadow.I went into The Lighthouse expecting it to be my favorite movie ever, and was disappointed to merely like it. It left me colder than I anticipated, though Dafoe and Pattinson angrily yawping at each other for two hours is Still a very good thing.
A lot of build up to the big reveal at the end.What’s in the light? What’s in the light? What’s in the light?SPOILERSThat’s for YOU to decide!Oh, screw you, movie.
What tangible object could actually have been in the light, though?
Oh I don’t know. Some supernatural sumptinorother. A siren. An angel. The heart of an alien. Whatever those lovecraftian tentacles belonged to. Something.
Not a fan of Pulp Fiction I take it?
I am. I guess it felt like there was more going on there besides just a game of ‘What’s in the mystery box?’ This was just two guys and the mysterious room upstairs that no one is ever allowed to go in because…. because. But I guess I’ll just assume the light was Marsellus Wallace’s soul and pretend to be happy with that.
Hahahaha I get it I was mostly joking. I enjoyed the Lighthouse well enough but it’s definitely understandable to not.
UPDATE: Well, according to Illuminati here, the squid monster William Defoe was naked in the lighthouse with was either SPOILERS a “false promise” or “coveted knowledge.”“Don’t ye being going upstairs, matey! Or your libel to have your innards torn out and splayed across the rocks by my [coveted knowledge].”It checks out.
If you saw it, you’d have been Rob Patt.
You really want that? Huh. What about the briefcase in Pulp Fiction?
Get an imagination, dude.
Meh, that’s a lazy cop out. We have imagination at home. I came to the movies for a story with an ending. The filmmaker is the creative. Why do I have to finish HIS story? He’s the one who claimed to have a story to tell.So what does your imagination tell you the ending was?
A false promise.
I’m so glad I don’t need every detail of every movie I see to be explained clearly to me.
Do you also find not hearing what Bill Murray says at the end of Lost in Translation to be a cop out? Not seeing inside the case in Pulp Fiction? It’s less about the actual physical object and more of what it represents. For The Lighthouse, that’s a coveted knowledge. The final shot of the movie is Robert Pattinson lying dead with a seagull eating his liver. Prometheus myth and all.
edit.
Yeah, explaining the light in great detail would’ve really put this over the top.
Haven’t seen The Lighthouse yet, but just watched Togo on Disney + and that guy needs an award for something. Really good movie.
A24 mostly killed it this year. The Lighthouse is one, and most recently, Uncut Gems. I had so much adrenaline after watching that, I got home and went on a 45 minute run. It’s basically Good Time but 20% more anxiety-inducing, if that’s your jam.
Probably Fighting with my Family.
This movie has a ton of heart. The four family members are all relatable and easy to root for and sympathize with, especially the brother (actor Jack Lowden)I would recommend this movie to anyone, as you don’t need to know a thing about wrestling to enjoy it.
This was one of the year’s best surprises for me
Allow me to be that guy: Avengers: Endgame. There, I said it.
BURN HIM!
How dare you like anything that was seen by more than six people, you fucking rube. Back to the theme park with you!
And for the record, Endgame is fucking awesome and one of my top ten of the year. So yes.
I enjoyed it a helluva lot more that that wankery Once Upon a Time in Hollywood everyone seems to think is so great.
I think that one’s pretty great, too.
Beautiful acting and art direction. Loved the attention to detail. Just thought the script could have used another pass or five.
It’s alright. We’re all allowed to be wrong every now and again.
Agreed. I’m just surprised how MANY critics were wrong.
Oh, I see what you did there! Tricky. Gonna keep my eye on you, you kooky japester.
What a shock the Neo Liberal shill is for championing a Disney theme park ride. Could Gawker be more transparent with their paid comments?
I think that was the only movie I actually saw in a theater this year, and it was exquisite.
I’ll do you one better – Scott Adkins’ Avengement.Horrible title aside, the film is great fun and easily one of Adkins’ top performances.
This is very much the correct answer.
You can keep all the gay cowboys eating pudding movies that no one except critics in coastal cities even see until late January. I’ll second Ready Or Not and Dolemite Is My Name, and throw in El Camino: A Breaking Bad Movie on top of them. The perfect little two-hour wrap-up to one of the greatest television series of all time. You want two hours to fly by? Watch El Camino.
Breaking Bad’s the one where the drug dealer blows up the other drug dealer with a boobytrapped wheelchair, right? And then he shoots the shit out of some nazis with a car-gun?If the movie doesn’t have a drug dealer shooting the clone-child of Hitler and El Chapo with a rocket launcher disguised as a prosthetic leg, I’ll be disappointed.
Be disappointed.
Oh, the “let’s pretend to not remember one of the top pieces of media in the 21st century ” post for this article!
I remember the part where the guy falls into the port a potty and gets covered with poop. And the part where the dude kills that spooky twin by shooting him in the head with a bullet that’s also a propellor. But other parts of it are fuzzy. I think there was a train one time?
You shouldn’t steer into the skid if it’s going to lead you off a cliff.
Yout will be disappointed because fucking nothing worthwhile happens in the entire movie, then it ends in the most obvious and boring way that you’ll wonder how this was written and directed by the genius who created BB.
El Camino fucking sucked.
Where is the Joker on this list? Few movies have grappled the consequences of austerity and a post Regan world period let alone using a comic book backdrop that reverse our expectations.
I know there was a huge backlash from cultural-paternalisitic reviewers that where worried that their neoliberal worldview would be challenged and can’t accept movies which show class struggle or the working class showing solidarity.
If it makes you feel better, all the contributors to this told me “Joker” was their No. 2 movie. They really liked it, but just liked other movies a bit more.
Well if all the contributors said it was number two then how come it was on the worst list of 2019? If literally everyone here was like it’s a solid number two flick?
It wasn’t a solid number two – it was a splattery, lumpy mess of a number two.
Shit’s still shit son. Point still stands if it’s a solid silver medal then it ain’t a wooden spoon y’dig? (Y’all do know what I mean by a wooden spoon yea?)
Lighten up, Francis.
You mean the movie that was two and a half hours of this but played entirely straight?
Really? You suspect
Quality response here. What happened, did your dad turn off the internet again?
I know there was a huge backlash from cultural-paternalisitic reviewers that where worried that their neoliberal worldview would be challenged and can’t accept movies which show class struggle or the working class showing solidarity.Right. It was totally that the movie was too leftist for The AV Club. That must have been it. It couldn’t have possibly been that it was a pastiche of better movies and a lazy caricature of mental illness with toothless, half-formed classist griping tacked on and then explicitly negated by the script. Keep on insisting that “What if bad clown but Taxi Driver and Occupy Wall Street?” is somehow brilliant cinema that scares people if it makes you feel good I guess.
AV CLub might be woke and #resistance but it sure as hell not leftest.If it is toothless at least it attempted to mention class which is more than can be said for 99 percent of the movies this year and every blockbuster.
Sure, kid. The AV Club is neoliberal, but Todd Phillips, who explicitly said he was making Joker because of “woke culture,” is a true leftist covertly sneaking The Communist Manifesto into a Scorsese ripoff supervillain origin story. Just be honest. You liked the film and now you’re spinning your wheels trying to make it mean something. But it doesn’t. It’s just nihilistic trash. Well-filmed nihilistic trash with a solid performance from Phoenix at the center, but nihilistic trash nonetheless. There’s nothing revolutionary or unique about a white guy getting shit on by the world and deciding to shoot people in response. You want a movie that deals with class in an intelligent way? Watch Parasite. Or Sorry to Bother You. Or The Last Black Man In San Francisco. Or Blindspotting. Even satires like Knives Out and the aforementioned Ready or Not have more to say about class than Joker does.
Ever notice no one ever uses the term ‘leftist’ except would-be right-wing ding-dongs?
Let me guess you are voting for Bloomberg or Mayor Pete like a good little gawker neo liberal
Let me guess, you won’t be eligible to vote at all for a good six years.
Let me guess you still blame Hillary Clinton’s loss on everything but Hillary Clinton
I don’t need to guess that you’re going to keep making this much of an ass of yourself in here as long as I keep giving you any sort of attention. Well, because it’s the holidays and I’m feeling generous, sugarplum, I’ll play along. If your dad says it’s okay to stay up a little bit later liking your own posts, go right ahead.And as for your other response…So you are trying to insult me by saying I am illegal. No fucking shock that #resistance is a joke… I’m honestly surprised you even know what a joke is.
So you are trying to insult me by saying I am illegal. No fucking shock that #resistance is a joke
Nah, fam. Let me guess, you won’t be eligible to vote at all for a good six years. He’s calling you a fucking child, because you’re being a fucking child.
What’s a joke is that you’re clearly self starring your own comments.
You just be honest. You hated the film the minute Gawker Media/Film twitter told you it was bad without bothering to see it.Now you admit it. You don’t like the film because the film is about a the wrong kind of protagonist. You rather watch Military approved theme park rides like the Marvel movies.
Right Knives Out is just so fucking deep. Come on you hate Joker because Todd Phillips said mean things about you.
Oh there it is! I was waiting for the Last Jedi/Rian Johnson dig. Better get upstairs, Billy. Your chicken nuggies are ready.
People whine about Rian Johnson like he eats puppies, bathes in the blood of infants, and personally shoots old ladies.
Yeah, little boys do tend to obsess on things, don’t they. Must be all that backed-up semen.
And there it is, the telling whining about Rian Johnson that indicate that female protagonist in Star Wars movies hurt your peepee.
You hated the film the minute Gawker Media/Film twitter told you it was bad without bothering to see it.Nope. I gave it 3-1/2 stars on Letterboxd. Roughly equivalent to The AV Club’s B-. As I already said, it’s visually impressive and Phoenix’s performance is good. It’s just not nearly as deep or thoughtful as you and the other fanboys are making it out to be.I never said Knives Out was deep. I said it’s deeper than the paper-thin, nihilistic movie that you’re trying desperately to imbue with great meaning because you want to keep looking down your nose at people who watch Marvel movies. How sad for you.
..
I mean, for what it’s worth: I didn’t *hate* Joker. I thought it Phoenix’s performance alone made it worth checking out, but where it succeeds, it mostly does so despite, not because of, the director. It’s a weird, messy film that apes a lot of other movies and is anchored by a stellar performance far better than the script or director deserved. And for all of that, I kind of liked it, but I don’t think it remotely deserves to be on a best of the year list.
Just throwing it out here: I’ve seen Joker maligned for various reasons, many of which boil down to “it’s been done before” or “it’s been done better,” and I think it’s kind of a “forest for the trees” thing.Sure, other movies have done subversion better, and have better captured the feeling behind the “FUCK the man!” mentality, but what if Joker is the first time you’re encountering those concepts? Probably going to resonate with you a bit more than it might for someone else.
Absolutely. I’ve said elsewhere that it’s a movie best appreciated by someone who hasn’t seen a lot of other movies. I don’t think it’s unfair to criticize the movie for being unremarkable as someone who has seen a lot of other films though.
I don’t think it’s unfair to criticize the movie for being unremarkable as someone who has seen a lot of other films though. That’s totally fair. Just seen a good amount (TRANSLATION: more than zero) of people saying shit like “Yeah, Joker’s fine, if you’re an idiot who hasn’t seen REAL cinema” and I want to punch them.
I definitely agree that you don’t have to be an idiot to think Joker was great. Though the issue here is people saying the opposite, that it’s so politically threatening and edgy that professional film critics are scared of or that, as one of our friends in the greys suggested, I must be too stupid to understand it. Which may be true in regards to some things, but certainly not when it comes to the psycho clown movie.
Yeah, I think the onus is on the fans to actually learn something in these exchanges, but pride says NO WAY.
It’s hard not to read that and not think of The Last Jedi.
Okay, but if you want a movie about class that’s also good you could watch Parasite, Knives Out, or Ready or Not. Pretty good year for movies about class actually, no need to settle for Joker.
It’s ok to say you aarent smart enough to get it. That would surely be a more reasonable an answer than the embarrassing pap you wrote.
Please, whatever you do, read this idiot’s responses to me. They’re both hilarious and a horrifically sad symbol of what this place has become.
So where did you copy and paste this from?
I know there was a huge backlash from cultural-paternalisitic reviewers that where worried that their neoliberal worldview would be challenged and can’t accept movies which show class struggle or the working class showing solidarity. Fackin’ SWEET TROAL brah.
Joker or Better Days which I think y’all love, it’s depressing and it’s foreign.
You’re depressing and I think you said once you were in Korea, so it’s odd we don’t love you.
I’m not in Korea yet bub.
Don’t care, boo.
Oh wow, someone else in the English speaking internet who saw Better Days? They do exist!
Saw it in the Cinema, didn’t think it’d be so depressing based on the synopsis.
Yeah, it was really not at all what I had expected from the synopsis I had read going in. I thought it was going to be, like, more of a documentary on bullying…
*cough* Booksmart *cough*
I was about to get upset about Eighth Grade, but was that a 2018 film for you lot?I mean, I could go back and check…
Eight Grade was released in the US in August 2018.
It’s weird how it shakes down sometimes. We got that well into 2019, on the other hand Climax came out in September 2018 in the UK.We also got that Joel Kinnaman film, Informer, months ago. Not out in the US until January, five months after the UK release.
I’m a little bit (happily) surprised that Eight Grade got international distribution at all.
One of my favorites from last year. If I recall correctly, my top two for 2018 were Eighth Grade and Infinity War.
It’s always hard when you realize how long ago Eighth Grade was.
Pain and Glory was very good and I’m glad I saw it but it lacked narrative drive and was uneven stylistically (other than the color red)…when he made Bad Education he made a strong choice to just make it like a Hitchcock movie, now I don’t think he needs to ape anybody, but I think he could have used a bit more of something, maybe 8 1/2. Penelope Cruz was amazing as always in his movies…but she wasn’t mean enough; the young version of the character did not line up with the elder version. BOOKSMART.
‘Shadow’ also made my best of 2019 list: stylish, heartfelt, and action-packed, this movie has it all. Another foreign film that I loved and expected to see in other people’s best of lists was ‘Border’, a truly strange, but strangely relatable fable.Off-topic: Kinja managed to mess up their layout again, without fixing any of the glitches I’m still experiencing. For example, the ‘Load More Comments’ and ‘Community’ buttons aren’t doing anything for me, so most of the time I can’t see all of the comments. Also, when I want to post a comment myself, after clicking ‘Publish’, my written text just goes gray and I have to refresh the page to see if it got posted, which has annoyingly resulted in some double posts. I’m using Chrome with Adblock Plus, so maybe that’s got something to do with it. Does anybody else experience these issues?
“Scary Stories to Tell in the Dark” was solid, well balanced horror, with great special effects. I think it deserves more praise, just by virtue of the fact that it wasn’t a complete disaster, and works rather well as a period piece too.
Not a complete disaster is a pretty low bar
Joker. Obviously.
the joker, baby!
And now, I want to see a trailer mashup of Arrested Development and Ready or Not.
*Footage not found*
I’ll cast my stone for “Good Boys”
The Gangster, The Cop, The Devil. A B-Movie where the B is for “Blast”.
“Dolemite is My Name” is sporadically amusing at best.
Wrong.
The Peanut Butter Falcon was a shockingly good movie.
This is a pretty good list of films. I just saw A Hidden Life this past weekend. I think it is the best movie of the year. However, I probably would have been in for a hour of Malick shooting Alps without any movie around it. I feel the only person who like it as much as me is Tasha Robinson, but that put me in good company.Peterloo would be one of more ten favorite of the year. László Nemes’s Son of Saul was my favorite movie of 2015. Sunset was not quite that but he is major talent super excited for anything else he makes. Ready or Not was smarter than I would have believed from the trailers and was super fun.
Alita: Battle Angel
A few to add:Apollo 11
Waves
Booksmart
The Peanut Butter Falcon
Low Tide (Though I don’t know if it got off the Festival Circuit)
See you yesterday.
And it would have been even better with am ending!
Films I like and films AV club like don’t really cross over , and I know this was just a kids film , but it was one of the most FUN things I saw all year , and featured mostly kids who looked and acted as kids , rather than early 20s actors pretending to be teens.Also Dolomite is my name – was great , plus seeing an enthusiastic Wesley Snipes actually act is amazing!
Two words: Mid. Sommar.
AV Club’s main list is good enough that I don’t think they missed anything major. But yea. Ready or Not is awesome. I’d include it. And I did really like It’s a Beautiful Day in the Neighborhood. For a subject about the famed children’s host, it’s very much a movie about harboring anger, and it’s speaking to adults, which is a really interesting approach.
The 10 best films of the year, in this order:Avengers: EndgameBooksmartCaptain MarvelCold PursuitThe Art of Self DefenseAlita: Battle AngelMidsommarSpider-Man: Far From HomeJojo RabbitKnives Out